Spectroscopy for the characterization of materials and cultural heritage

The use of radiation or of particles as probes to investigate the matter by spectroscopic techniques is one of the main ways followed by researchers to define its structure and properties. Furthermore, there are several mechanisms of interaction able to provide indirect information about composition, bonds, and interactions, which describe the state of the system under investigation by proposing a proper model. For this reason, Spectroscopy can be considered a powerful tool for the study of materials by the characterization of the features influencing the properties. In the last years, the application fields of spectroscopic techniques was extended from synthetic materials also to the study of goods of interests in the field of cultural heritage, more complex systems for variable composition, and less or absent prior knowledge, which requires non-invasively investigation as the main demand to preserve the integrity of the object. The chemical-physical analysis can reveal, for example, information about the production of the object (raw materials and technology of the manufacture), the aging (the chemical processes involved due to the interaction with the environment permanence in the time) and the conservation state (to tailor the actions in the restoration work or to preserve the object for future) [1]. There are some limits to the amount of information available from spectroscopy so it is necessary to develop approaches to standardize the setup and the methods for investigating a kind of object, extracting the highest amount of information with the lowest impact [2]. My research activity focused on that, developing new approaches devoted mainly to the study of archaeological metals and paintings. During the presentation, firstly a brief description of the research field will be provided, then some cases studios will be described in order to show the potentiality of spectroscopy applied to cultural heritage. One of the study regarding two Montefortino helmets [3] summarize how X-ray and neutron based spectroscopies permits to describe the metal of the goods from the production to the corrosion.